


Giving all my love to you

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M, a chronicle of a disaster gay couple, indulgent me just writing for the kibashino nation, trust me there is zero plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 23:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18486949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: “Shino,” Kiba calls out, hands in pocket. “I’ll see you when I see you.”He barely has time to gape in open affront before Kiba shoots him finger guns with both hands, and turning around to run off into immigration.





	Giving all my love to you

**Author's Note:**

> i would like to say amber and laura put me up to it. this has all the tropes available and i am so tired please criticise me tomorrow morning

Shino, growing up, predictably and unsurprisingly, doesn’t get touched much, or is able to reach out for a friend and not have that friend go sprinting for the hills. His beetles are not poisonous, nor are they acrimonious towards strangers, but society at large had naturalised a superficial fear of bugs into young children to scare them away from entomology at large. He thinks it’s propaganda. Shibi agrees with him, and Torune just mostly tells them off whenever they get into those moods where they debate about the government sanctioning public’s fear in the wondrous field of insect studies.

As such, he doesn't have friends, or is in dire need of one. He had survived on the terrible straits of Zero  Friendship for many years counting. He is going to survive for many more years ahead.

The universe glances down at him, nods with Fate, and throws Inuzuka Kiba at Shino. For entertainment, it decides. We want some Laughter. Some Good Ol’ Chortle Around The Fireplace.

Shino doesn't think it's funny. Or hilarious. Or convenient. But here they are.

Kiba’s meeting with him is just a frightening experience, filled with the dog-like boy crouching in a sumo wrestling pose and trying to tackle Shino to the ground. Shibi thinks it's a way to say hi. Shino just thinks Kiba wants to bury him alive.

That meeting was counterproductive. But Torune got a good hearty chuckle out of it when he was relayed that information.

Shino, naively, because he's ten and sheltered and still very much naive, thought that was the end of it. No more.

The universe definitely got a hearty chuckle out of that one.

No, because Inuzuka Kiba doesn't understand that when people are visibly uncomfortable with your presence, you are meant to retreat. He, an alien breed of his own making, decided that quiet, reclusive, reticent, hooded - literally - Shino, is to be his friend. Preferably for a long time.

Shino dreads and dreads and with every _This possibly cannot happen -_ it happened.

Shino sighs. He's done literally zero wrong in his life. He doesn't deserve this.

The universe decides to chuckle a few more and straight up ignores him and his plight.

The first time Kiba tries to hug Shino, there is a blood nose involved.

See, Kiba is very enthusiastic and boisterous. He’s loud. He does everything with a lot of dramatics and ensuing sound effects. He flings himself at people who he intends to hug - and from the reactions of his intended, they mostly go running. Only the strong few brace the impact of prepubescent dog enthusiast and return the hug, fulfilling their duties, and letting go of Kiba so they can go on their day.

It seems that Kiba, through convoluted logic in that dog-addled brain of his, decided that Shino, spindly, bug-loving Shino, would be able to accommodate someone his height and weight, propelling at a very fast speed onto his person.

“What - _no no no I can’t catc -!”_ He steps back, trying in vain to fend Kiba away, but this one is persistent, because once he has a target, he will finesse that hug out of them, no matter the method.

That is the reason why, for several minutes, Kiba spends it chasing after Shino who is growing closer and closer to hysterics, fleeing from him. Kiba is determined, and slightly maniacal, and Shino just wants to go home and never emerge again. He sprints, and makes the mistake of not looking back to check where Kiba is, that he slams his shoulder into something - _someone -_ and hops back, clutching his shoulder more in shock, than pain.

“Oh,” Kiba says, touching his _definitely_ bruising nose. “Ouchie.”

Shino, who had never drawn blood directly from another person before in his life, is understandably _terrified,_ that he approaches Kiba without preambles to personal space or his inherent distaste for this Inuzuka out of all the loud and intolerable Inuzukas out there, checking for a blood nose.

There is, unfortunately, blood, but Kiba takes it in good stride. He doesn’t even start ridiculously bawling, and Shino doesn’t realise where he is holding Kiba (hand to the back of the neck, their feet touching, another hand under his chin and tipping his head back) that when someone does wander by them and bring a pack of ice over, that he realises that he was coerced into a hug in the most traumatising way possible.

“Did you plan that?” He asks, accusingly, with only mild curiosity at how that plan came to fruition.

“Not the blood nose, no,” Kiba mumble through Shino’s handkerchief. “The details are vague, but I wanted a hug, and I will get a hug.”

“That’s scary,” he admits. “Please don’t do it again.”

He doesn’t include a _next time,_ because he does not like for it to have a _next time._

“But I want a hug, Aburame-chan ~!”

Shino has his hands on this brat’s nose. He can squeeze all the blood clean from his head like a ripe lemon. He can. He would, if he was raised any less differently.

But because father raised him with proper manners, and Torune raised him to know when to yield when favours are not even considering his name in any direction, he acquiesces. Stepping closer, he wraps an arm across Kiba’s shoulder, cringing all the while, as if he is putting away the corpse of a dung beetle that had begun to rot in his room, and reaches for a shoulder, squeezing once, and stepping back out.

“Wow, Aburame-kun, you don’t know how to hug, like, at all,” Kiba marvels.

His eye twitching behind his glasses, he presses the cloth further down onto Kiba’s nose.

“Don’t call me Aburame. Call me Shino. And what makes you think I get the chance to refine my hugging, with so many people willing to let me unleash the full spectrum of my affections upon their person?”

“Owie,” Kiba complains. “Then you can practice on me! I’m a great hugger.”

Shino would not like to practice the arts of hugging on Kiba. It sounds like a recipe for imminent disaster.

“No thanks.”

“Then I’ll just make this happen, again and again, until you do!” Kiba promises, too much cheer and sunshine behind such a nefarious scheme.

“That’s,” Shino blinks, “kinda dark? You okay there?”

“I just want a hug from _Shino,_ ” Kiba drawls out his name, making it all weird, and Shino squints. Squints hard. Because he never had a close friend (or a friend, period), but he’s pretty sure this isn’t a friend. This is just someone who is obsessed with him.

“Um, no,” he refutes, and decides that he will have to deal with the circumstances. “I don’t like getting hugged violently. My family doesn’t initiate contact with me, and I don’t with them.”

“That’s boring, Shino-chan. But okay, fine, how about a deal?”

Shino is pretty sure this is much more deeper to one party than the other, but anything to get out of a hug is a sure victory for him, so he steps back, actually attentive.

“I get to be your friend, and I'll play by your rules.”

“That sounds like a lot more work than it suggests. And what do you mean, my rules?”

“Why don't you like me hugging you?”

He thinks about it. It's not the contact that is cursed, but, the steps leading to the hug...could use some revisions.

He tells Kiba just that.

“Okay,” Kiba agrees easily. “I'll warn you nicely next time. No violent or loud hug. Promise.”

Shino regards the pinkie finger with no less suspicion than a soldier would give a grenade, but he can't have a bawling Kiba breaking down his compound door to cry about how he doesn't want to be his friends. That's very hard to explain to father and Torune.

He hooks his pinkie through Kiba's, and feels like he signed himself up for a lifetime of this clingy dog-boy hybrid slowly becoming an extension of his life and never leaving.

That doesn't seem like a very good future.

He walks Kiba back, because he doesn't like having this one follow him to where he lives. Before Kiba disappear inside, he hovers near Shino, shifting his feet, left, right, heel and toe. Asking for something, probably can't find the words.

"Yes,” he hedges, fearing the worst.

“Can I,” Kiba squints, “have a hug.”

“Why do you ask that like you don't know if it's the right thing to ask or not.”

“Well I _don't.”_

“Look, Kiba, do you want a hug or not.”

Kiba looks at him like he is stupid.

“Okay, then, come,” he lifts his arms out, wide open and accepting of his fate.

Kiba continues to stare. Shino is beginning to think that he looks stupid.

“This window of opportunity only will remain open for a maximum of five seconds, get in or get out.”

Kiba moves in and claps him loudly on the back, two thumps on his shoulder blade, and moves back, frowning. Shino loosely lets his arms encircle around Kiba and hopes that he can pretend to hug and not get called out for faking it.

“You're awfully cooperative, even after bashing my nose in,” the dog boy observes.

Shino turns immediately on his heel and starts to march out.

“Goodbye, Inuzuka.”

“Shino!” He hears, a shrill war cry. “See you at school!”

Oh gods. He has to see _this_ at school. No. Escape is inevitable now.

Shino makes a sound, distinctive of a tyre being let free of its air, tromping home, plotting escape routes.

  

(His phone hums in his pocket, and he steps back, anticipating the force of someone flinging himself at him.

And Kiba does, fling himself at the spot before Shino, before skidding to a stop, smoothing all of the adrenaline running loose in his limbs to a lull, and extends out both of his arms.

“Hey you,” his smile is all teeth and warm _kotetsu_ and falling asleep unaware of their surroundings. “Can I have a hug?”

“I can’t believe you still ask, every single time,” he rolls his eyes, opening up his arms and stepping in. Kiba’s hair smells like a thousand specks of dirt had migrated between its strands and the shampoo he stole from Shino.

Kiba doesn’t answer him, only laughs into his collarbones, arms winding around his waist and under his jumper.)

 

 

Thus, Shino doesn't know what his life is, outside of Kiba. It's such an inconvenience. It's an absolute menace that he is left to fend for himself against the literal human cyclone that is Inuzuka Kiba. People keep lumping them together. They think that this unit is going to last. They think it's A Thing, that Kiba and Shino now exist as a singular unit of brain cell that goes by the inane Shiba Shiba. Their names are used interchangeably. They are now only one entity sharing two different vessels, but soon, they will be one. It's unacceptable. It's utterly blasphemous. It's -

"Hey Shino," Tenten passes by, waving at him. He lifts a hand, about to return the greeting, when she tacks on - "Hey Kiba."

Of course.  _Of course he is here too._

Shino would scream, but he's out of breath and energy to care. He will have to ignore it, brave it, grow a shell and cart it around, move on.

The school year, meanwhile, runs off without his knowledge, and slowly, bleeds into another - and another - and another year. And he is here, moving backwards, being human, being careless, and wholly incorporating Kiba into his routine. What he does, Kiba does - and vice versa. 

Years pass him by, and in continual bouts of horror, he realises, that he is not only  _tolerable_ towards Kiba, he is _fond_ of their interactions, he  _looks forward_ to meeting Kiba.

"You're looking a bit pale there, buddy," Shikamaru comments, taking a drag of his cigarette. 

Shino bats away the smoke directed at his face, moving another piece on the chessboard. 

"Don't mind me."

"Thinking of someone?" The other boy hums, shifts a knee under the  _kotatsu._

"Don't mind me," Shino slams a rook down with a lot more force than a gentle game of intellects requires. 

Shikamaru doesn't look the bit convinced, but he's one with a high affinity for tactical thinking, so he wisely doesn't inquire into matters of Shino's convoluted web of relationship. Shino also doubts that he cares about him that much to even push for further insight. Only Kiba does that. Kiba would not have kept his silence and play a game of psychological manipulation through his eyes alone like Shikamaru. Kiba would -

"Checkmate," his opponent declares. "Pay attention, Shino."

He only makes a vague noise of disgruntled defeat and shakes Shikaramaru's hand with grudging respect. It was an awry victory on either side. He lost because he wasn't paying attention and Shikamaru won because of his wandering mind, not by a concrete, clear cut defeat he earned. 

His phone vibrates. That sounds like Kiba.

Shikamaru starts flinging chess pieces at him and tells him to  _go away, we'll play shogi for real next time you come over, bug boy._

He leaves, Kiba's sporadic texts leaving him winded. 

  

And so, the chronicle of people witnessing the Shiba Shiba show commences.

There is Sai -

Shino is seen patting Kiba’s back with a ruler, absently flipping through his history notes.

Sai blinks down at him, clearly disgusted.

“What,” his voice is bland, “is his problem.”

Under normal circumstances, he would have aggravated the issues at hand. But he has a test in half an hour and Kiba is at usual, on his bullshit, so he explains, with as little words as possible.

“He’s crying about shirtless Naruto playing soccer.”

“Ah,” Sai taps his chin. “Gay panic?”

Shino has a faint inkling of what that is but he nods, just wanting to get rid of these two so he can focus on studying.

“Abs,” Kiba moans. “I saw his abs.”

“Who hasn’t seen Uzumaki’s abs, to be honest,” he kicks back, feet propping onto Kiba’s lap. “Move and I will remove your kneecaps.”

Kiba responds by violently undergoing a full body shudder and Shino might have had to execute a few well-aimed kicks to get him to not topple backwards into the floor or face planting himself onto the bench top in front of them. Sai watches on, brows climbing closer together, until it comes to an almost monobrow on his forehead.

“Aren’t,” he flings his pointer finger between Kiba and Shino, “aren’t you two -?”

Kiba screeches and slams his forehead onto the bench top, with Shino sighing from the top of his head.

“I’m trying to get an education here. I don't know what he is doing."

Sai decides to not ask into _this_ any further. The less he knows, the better.

 

And Ino -

“Hey,” Ino passes by, Hinata in tow. Nobody bat an eye when Hinata and Kiba engage in an unnecessarily complicated handshake routine, as Shino and Ino loom over their heads and talking at each other's faces.

“Hello, Ino-san,” Shino bows.

“I told you before, just Ino is fine,” she reminds him, to no end. He will never drop the honorifics. She would have to die before that can happen, and nothing can kill a Yamanaka, so. Goodbye familiarity.

“Are you going somewhere with Hinata?” Kiba jumps in between them, not touching Shino physically, but crowding into his space, that even when he is holding Hinata's hand, it is a little bit obvious who he wants to be lumped in a set with.

Ino doesn't have the energy to stare. She's done that for far too long now to even care at this point.

“Yeah, yeah we are,” Ino blinks, three seconds away from reacting as Shino and Kiba both routinely lean over to mess up Hinata's hair. “Okay, cool, we're just leaving now.”

Hinata bats them away, calls them embarrassing, and then hooks her arm around Ino's ankle, smiling up at her.

Shino and Kiba stand, creepily too alike an old married couple sending their child off to her prom night with her dashing date.

Ino would not like to have that image stuck in her mind, thank you very much. She is going to forget and suppress.

  
There is also that one time Naruto and Lee catch him and Kiba aggressively trying to hold each other's hands outside of the school gates. It's cold - Shino has terrible blood circulation that leaves him to the state of a frozen popsicle of human teenage depressive woes. So Kiba has the great idea of him holding Shino's hands,  _so that you won't be missing fingers by the time spring comes, Shino-chan._ Shino predictably had vehemently refused to be seen engaging in human contact, let alone be witnessed in holding anyone's hands. 

Thus Naruto is the unwilling witness to Kiba flinging gloves and heat packs at his back as he dodges them and sprints away from the onslaught of projectiles hurtling at his direction. Kiba roars, a frightful sound, and leaps at him, aiming for his hand.

They fall, Shino making sure he is bearing the brunt of the impact, and that Kiba falls onto him, as they topple to the slippery path of the school ground.

"Are you dead or dying?" He tries to assess while on the ground and sustaining a little bruise on his skull.

Kiba is opportunistic. He seizes hold of Shino's frozen solid hands before anything, and begins a long lamentation of his non-existent injuries, all the while squeezing his hands purple and pink, until Shino is positive that the rush of blood from his heart decides to concentrate on his ears and fingertips, as it does, and he is suddenly Very Warm.

This development is Not Welcomed. Not At All. 

This is Kiba. There isn't supposed to be any feelings involved. He's supposed to be a rock. Unmoving, corroded in time, but unmoving. Stationary. Not dragged to wherever the river decides to push him to.

"Let go," he gripes, trying to get Kiba off him.

To no avail, obviously. But he can claim that he tried. 

"Let me walk you to class," Kiba wheedles. "Otherwise we'll be here all day. I will win."

He can hear Naruto slowly approaching, with Lee getting ready to get involved. 

"Okay, okay," he shrugs Kiba off, carefully, of course, he's not a complete brute, all with entwining hands and everything. 

Kiba looks distinctly triumphant. Shino wouldn't blame him.

"Um, guys," Naruto is by their side, blinking between them. "You need help?" 

Shino only sighs as Kiba yips "We're all good!" He also doesn't protest when he is dragged off by the fingers to his next class, a bounce in Kiba's steps. 

 

He clamps down on Shino's shoulder, an eyebrow arched. There is a pause, then -

_“Hey.”_

Shino, while maintaining a perfectly flat expression, is not at a level where he can control his ear colour, so while he seems perfectly composed, his ears stand as a stark contrast, and Kiba is _delighted_.

The prey is caught. Hook, line and -

“Wanna go to formal together?”

Shino blinks behind tinted glasses, owlish gold eyes undoubtedly wide and innocent-looking.

“Kiba,” his voice is gentle, and trying hard not to hurt Kiba for some reason. “You can go to formal by yourself. It is not a prerequisite to attend with a partner. You will not be barred entry to the venue upon your entrance by your own company.”

First of all, Kiba rightfully screamed inside his head.

Second of all, he could have balloons and streamers blazing and Shino would regard all of this as friendly invitation to accompany each other to a highly romantic outing but to Shino it would be emphatically unromantic.

Kiba wants to smother his face in the nearest tree trunk and scream himself to death, but he also needs to do the socially acceptable thing and complete his invitation.

“I know that,” he grins, the edges of that smile tapering off. “But I just wanna go with my best mate, ya know? Last formal with the crew, before we all disperse and go to other places. So, would you do the me honour?”

Kiba forgets, that while Shino misses out on painfully obvious social cues, he catches onto the ones with a lot of implications layered one after another. So in this case, when he points out that  -

“You can ask anyone else to go with you. Nobody would turn you down.”

Kiba shrugs, meeting his eyes evenly. They're the same age and Shino is leaving him much further behind in the height department.

“I know. I can, but I want you to go with me. It's you that I want, nobody else.”

His head is humming something like _Ha GAY_ and honestly he would protest to it but the details are all fuzzy and Shino is staring at him in earnest now. With really really red ears.

“Uh,” Shino definitely _wheezes._ “If you'll have me.”

Kiba blinks. “I'm asking you. Of course I'm having you do whatever I want. You don't get a choice.”

Shino's tone is bland and unimpressed. “How courteous of you to consider me in your plans.”

“Yes or no, Aburame, it's not a trick question.”

“Am I even allowed to say no?” Is Shino's rare and winning grin - and Kiba distinctly feels like the table is flipped onto his head and now he is being played.

It really doesn't matter. Him taking Shino or Shino taking him - it's all semantics. Endgame is the same.

“You owe me a dance,” Kiba wags a finger in front of Shino's face. “I'm holding you onto that.”

“I wouldn't dare forget,” is Shino's droll eye roll.

 

(Kiba did end up getting his dance. It was indeed very genuinely comfortable. Just the two of them, grass under their feet, nice shoes and socks tossed somewhere in the dark. Shino doesn't have his glasses on - neither does Kiba, the both of them relying on sheer muscle memory to lead each other around in the dimly lit garden ground. His slacks are rolled up thrice - shirt all wrinkled, result of everyone tossing him around for dances for the entire night. Shino's eyes are lamp light patches along a brightly lit river at night, murky, luminescent, a depth he cannot approach without submerging at least chest deep in. They sway, decorum left indoors, Shino's hand cool against the cold of his back, skin cool under Kiba's warm palm, sliding further into the hair on the back of his head. 

They're moving closer - enough to touch, enough to test the waters, but Kiba doesn't want to jump in the deep end yet, doesn't want to fling himself in chest-deep water to chase a globe of light to the bottom of the river floor. 

Shino doesn't press the space between them closer. They sway, the moon watching on, violets blooming, dew undulating on the petals spreading dusk and twilight onto a garden of night. 

"You got your dance," Shino tells him later, when they're walking home, shoes in one hand, fingers all entangled in another. He doesn't know where he begins and Shino ends. 

"Didn't want to go all Captain America on you later when I don't get it," he rolls his eyes.

"Hmm," is all Shino gives him, moving closer. 

Neither of them mention the romantic implications of that reference. Not that they need to.)

 

 

The airport feels a lot less incriminating when he sent Naruto off to his nomad study travel with Jiraiya. It's even less when Shikamaru is escorted off to Kiri. This - whatever he is feeling in the depth of his chest, he doesn't like it.

Shino is gripping the luggage bag too tight, knuckles turning white from his blood-circulating-off clutch.

Kiba is busy prattling away with Hana and Hinata, hugging and kissing the tops of their heads goodbye, before being surrounded by their idiot friends piling onto him and putting him into headlocks.

He realises, in an airport, ten minutes away from sending his Kiba off to Suna, that even though Naruto is beautiful and funny and generally too good for the sake of humanity, they're just friends.

He thinks Kiba and him are just friends too, but friends don't look at each other the way they do. They don't aggressively throw jackets over each other's shoulders even when they're cold. They don't tap on windows on the second storey at two in the morning and sleep on your floor because you were lonely and walk you to school.

His head hurts. What's with this more than a friend and less than a boyfriend situation?

“Okay, I'm good, I'm here,” Kiba is by his side, breathing heavily, eyes upturned into crescents as he crashes bodily into Shino.

Shino rolls his eyes and allows Kiba to wrangle his fingers into a holding position that works for Kiba, and let himself be dragged to the entryway of immigration.

“Any last words?” Kiba slants him a look.

Shino doesn’t dare open his mouth, for it could ruin a lot if he speaks - but if he is silent on this issue as well, it could just stagnate them. For a long time.

“I’ll see you when I see you,” Shino decides on, judging that it is appropriately ambiguous enough to leave a lot of things open.

Kiba’s brows knit together, because they did end up pulling an all nighter and just screaming at each other instead of sleeping, so nobody's brain is working and everybody is confused.

“Yeah okay, sure,” Kiba replies, swaying on his toes and throwing himself into a hockey tackle at Shino. Normally he wouldn't even bother with resisting, but his best friend is leaving and there will be less people who appreciate him. It is a terrible, terrible thought.

Shino stands his ground, rebuking Kiba's shoving.

“Let me take you down,” Kiba grits, hopping and crashing onto his arm.

“Somebody might come and take you away on a buggy,” he scolds the boy mildly.

“Less walking for me!” Kiba crows, crashing onto his shoulder. “Ow.”

Shino isn't normally like this. Shino had subsisted on zero friendship up until the tender age of ten where Kiba crashed into his life and remained stuck until the age of seventeen when he decided to go to Suna for his tertiary studies. Shino had molded his life around Kiba, not voluntarily, and now Kiba is gone and he has to do all of that over again. Awful. It is an absolute shame, on his ancestors and his own dignity.

“Mate, you alright?” Kiba pulls the zip on his jacket. “Don't zone out on me, Shino.”

He grunts in response and feels distinctly Sasuke-ish. That is only attractive to maybe four people, and those all claim to have questionable tastes in men. Shino, as one who curates his standards and holds himself to a much higher calibre than Uchiha Sasuke, must restrain that in. Do not become Sir Emo Edgelord.

“Just,” he sighs, awkwardly honest, “trying to plan out my day without you.”

"You were close with Shika, but you weren't this mopey when he left,” Kiba grins, crooked canine sitting firmly on chapped lips. “Heck, you weren't even this bad when Hinata went away. I'm just like them, Shiba Shiba, it'll be fine.”

“Don't use our infused identity when you are taking leave from the Shiba Shiba dynamic,” he mumbles, definitely not petulant. He is a grown ass adult. He is leaving his teens. He does not pout.

Kiba goes still for a moment, and returns with aggressive spite, poking relentlessly at his cheek.

“Shino Shino, are you sad that I'm leaving?” He taunts, not expecting an answer.

Shino lives to surprise.

“Yeah, kinda, a little, a lot,” he admits, though not without pain and regret.

“You'll live. You lived without Naruto,” Kiba pops a chin on his lowered shoulder, breath fanning against his cheek, smelling like canned coffee and green tea all at once.

Shino swallows. Doesn't think the voice that escaped his throat is his.

“But you're not Naruto. You're Kiba, and you leaving just reminds me of how I'm not that functional without you here.”

Kiba is silent. The PA screams out a scheduled countdown. Hours before takeoff.

“What,” Kiba clutches onto his sleeve. “What are you sayin -”

“Go,” he pushes away from this one, the one with too many question marks inside of his head. He can’t - there is not a single straight thought that is coherent inside his head - not when Kiba is so close and looking like Shino crippled Akamaru on purpose.

“You’re not telling me shit -”

“Kiba,” hand on shoulder, eyes to eyes. Gold to brown, Kiba’s glasses bouncing off lights from the announcement boards. “I told you what I could.”

“No you didn’t,” that face that he wants to keep a smile on at all times, it is scrunching up in confusion. Hurt. “You’re running away again. It’s just me. We don’t have to - nothing has to - it’s me.”

His eyes bleed solid gold when his cold fingers clutch the skin under Kiba’s chin, touching their foreheads together.

“I’ll miss you when you go, Inuzuka Kiba,” he tells the space between their mouths. So close. Very close. A few more moments - and they will get there.

The disembodied voice over their heads breaks them apart. Kiba doesn’t relent the death grip on his sleeve, holding on.

“It’s not as if,” Kiba sniffs. “We’ll be apart forever. We can always pick up and keep the wheel going.”

“Yeah,” the corner of his mouth lifts, a ghost of a smile, “we’ll break so we can come together.”

“I literally hate your philosophical ass so much,” Kiba flings his hand away, wiping at his nose. “It’s just seeing me to the airport, Socrates, not sending me off to war. Now leave me, I’m gonna be late.”

Shino doesn’t like how everything in his life is a big irony and he regrets ever rebuking Kiba’s clinginess every time they bid each other goodbye when they were younger. There is space now that he does not want to relinquish, but they must be in different worlds and there must be distance between them.

“Shino,” Kiba calls out, hands in pocket. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

He barely has time to gape in open affront before Kiba shoots him finger guns with both hands, and turning around to run off into immigration.

 

Kiba leaves, and returns, and life goes on as before. There are hiccups, on how he will fit in with everyone, but Kiba is stubborn. He will make it work. He is the glue in a lot of relationships. It will go on in the ways it needs to. 

The very big elephant of the room is addressed, nominally after a lot of hiccups. This. Them. Whatever they are. 

Hinata is walking with them, slotted right in the middle, one hand of hers holding Kiba and the other holding Shino, and at some point, she slips back, joining them in the middle.

 _Hinata,_ he screams inside his head.  _Don't do this to me, please._

"Well," Kiba glances down. Kiba glances up - not a lot now, because he did grow during his years abroad. Filled out in the shoulders too. "I guess we have to talk about this. Us."

"We don't have to," is Shino's wise addition.

"No," Kiba stares at him. "I wanna label it. Let's call it dating."

"Did I even have a choice," Shino asks around, but Hinata only gives him a thumb up. "I'll take it?"

"Mum," Kiba cheers. "I finally caught him!"

"Caught me  _how?"_

 

Kiba is drifting to sleep one moment and sits up abruptly the next, throwing a lot of blankets onto Akamaru's face.

 _“Oh my god,”_ he wheezes. “I did _everything_  wrong.”

Akamaru is heard groaning, pawing the blankets away from his snout.

But Kiba doesn't have time for trivialities like that. He is on memory lane. He is on a roll.

“That time that I asked Shino for a dance in senior ball.  _That was so_ ** _gay.”_ **

He immediately picks up the phone and dials Shino. There is a shuffle on the second ring.

“Kiba,” his sigh is weary, disappointed but not surprised. “It is three in the morning. Most people sleep at this time.”

“Shino, that's irrelevant. Are we gay.”

“Yes. Why do you pose that like a statement?”

“Sorry, are we gay, question mark.”

“That's not how punctuations work. You can't just dictate a question mark and call it a question. And the answer is still yes. Why do you need me to confirm this to you at 3 AM?”

“Because,” Kiba stresses, and that was it.

“I’m hanging up.”

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” A pause, but the call is still ongoing. “Did you like the dance?”

Shino is silent, so, so silent.

“I don’t  _hate_ it,” is what he says, but that’s about the best that Shino can do feelings, and Kiba is beaming. “And now I’m hanging up. Don’t call me unless you’re dying.”

“I just needed confirmation -”

“Kiba,” Shino is probably smothering his face behind his palm. “We’ve been dating for 2 years. Yes, we are a little bit gay. Good morning to you too, now I am going back to sleep.”

Akamaru barks at him to shut up when he starts screeching in bed.

 

Kiba decides to revive the jumping hug from the ye darke olde days of their bloody childhood, to the chagrin of Shino, who had been directly opposing for this reemergence since the day he knows that fighting with Kiba will actually reap results somewhere. It had come to no avail in this scenario, but there had been years in between where he has time to grow into one of the strong few, by force and through the reluctance of love. He has to become stronger to catch Kiba, otherwise there will be injuries to the both of them, uncalled for and annoying, so he would like to avoid all of that if possible.

Also hugging Kiba is nice. But he doesn't tell that to anyone.

He hears vaguely, as Kiba is prattling to Torune.

“If I run towards Shino and scream his name, he will catch me in his arms!”

He doesn't get to hear what Torune's opinions are on such false accusation of his character, because there are impending footsteps heading towards him and a bloodcurdling  _Shino!_

_“Wait, I'm holding tea!”_

He fumbles with his tea cup, brain trying to juggle the mental arithmetic of  _Catch boyfriend or save tea?_

The cup can be cleaned up. Kiba can't be shut up if he falls and is failed on such a loud and obvious declaration of love.

Plus he gets to flex on Torune and his arm days.

Decision reached in less time that a normal person needs, he dives under and catches Kiba easily in his arms, the man wriggling and giggling into his shoulder.

“Yay!” Kiba tells him, this close to giving him a kiss in the mouth, in the presence of righteousness and Daylight Rules enforcement.

“I didn't think you would catch him,” Torune observes drolly, surveying the shattered teacup and spilled tea. “Impressive.”

“Is he mocking us?” Kiba whispers into the crown of his head, barely a brush of a kiss onto his hair.

Torune raises an eyebrow. Shino lowers Kiba somewhere dry.

“A hundred percent,” he tells Kiba. “Also you're cleaning that up.”

“But you dropped it!”

“Who made me drop it, I wonder?”

Kiba pokes out a tongue at him, and Shino only has time to roll his eyes, fondly, at this entire bundle of every vibration in the world squeezed into a body.

“So,” Torune begins.

“I'm currently not accepting any criticism.”

“Okay, okay,  _otouto,_ okay.”

 

He wakes early, bumping into a little  _someone_ who falls asleep by his elbow as they fall asleep going through the list of apartment the night before. 

"Oi," he nudges Kiba. "Up."

"That's not romantic, Shino-chan," is the immediate response. 

"I'm leaving without you."

_"Wait, wait, I was joking - don't gooo!"_

 

 

Kiba told him once -

“Let's make a pact, that like, at thirty years of age, if we're still single, we'll marry each other.”

Shino paid exactly zero attention to that. Because he was a fool, and ignorant.

Now, ring in pocket, his head is buzzing, trying to give him the best possible proposal words.

Kiba is on the phone with someone, hand linked messily in his, fingers calloused and long, gripping the knuckles of his fingers tightly, squeezing as the person on the other end says something funny and Shino must absolutely be aware that it was Funny and laugh along with Kiba.

It's a tradition that he never once adhered to, but it's been ingrained into Kiba's fingers and can't be scraped off, even with a knife, so he just mostly leave it be. Especially because Kiba only holds his hand and Akamaru, and with the dog, it's very one sided.

Kiba barks out a few more words, the Suna tongue making the syllables curt and coarse, but it's organic and homegrown, like a cute pet cactus. He should be almost done. Shino should almost have his words ready.

“Okay, yeah, yeah, I will, see ya, Kuro,” Kiba hangs up.

“Kankuro?” Shino asks, just for the sake of conversation.

“Hmm,” Kiba hums. “People say I shouldn't associate with him or multitask, but look at me. I got two hands and a simple brain. I hold your hand with one hand and send memes to Kankuro with the other. All problems solved. I choose who I want to associate with, thanks. Why are you trying not to laugh.”

Shino bursts out a little grin.

“How Kiba-esque of you to reason through that. How was the catch up? That lasted almost half an hour,  I'll have you know.”

“Just us ranting, but that's the usual. He just found more toxins by the desert plateau and I have to know about it,” they're by the compound now, gates booming ominously. Kiba walked him home, or he had just dragged this dog idiot back, and they're loitering, pulling time by its antlers and telling it to _wait, let us stay by this, a little bit longer._

Shino, because now he's plagued with Go Stupid, with zero preemption, drops to one knee.

Kiba reacts immediately and kicks him in the shoulder.

Their little tussle lasts about twenty seconds,   before Shino wrangles Kiba, bodily away from him.

“Oi, listen - damn it, Kiba, stop kicking -”

“Why are you kneeling!” Kiba screeches, too reminiscent of that vine. To the tune of _Why are you running,_ he thrashes, bucking Shino off. “I asked you, why are you kneeling?”

“Because I wanted to tell you something, stop that ruckus,” Shino dodges a Van to the cheek. “Will you breathe? It won't take you long.”

“What,” Kiba stops, only momentarily. Eyes big and vulnerable and red, because of hayfever and pollen season.

Shino, before he panics and has a pocket of thinking space where he can regret, powers on.

“Remember when we were sixteen, stupid and kinda depressed -”

“Shino, we're twenty six, still stupid and depressed.”

Ignoring Kiba, he keeps on going.

“- and we promised each other that by the time we're thirty, if we're still single, we'll marry each other?”

Kiba isn't allowed the time to recall the memory or even think, because Shino pops out the ring and holds it up like Simba from the Lion King.

“We're not thirty, and we are dating each other, so I thought I should remedy some of the terms and just,” He has words but he is not using them. “I can't imagine a future without you. Will you be my significant annoyance until the day of our inevitable separation?”

Kiba nearly kick him again and doesn't give him an answer.

“You do realise silence is not an answer,” he hedges, because Silent Kiba is Dangerous and if he could avoid that at all cost, then it would be great, thanks.

“What do you think,” Kiba sniffs, loud and embarrassing and possibly snotty. “Of course yes. You can't get rid of me that easily.”

 

(“I knew Kiba would get Hinata in the divorce,” Naruto slaps the table.

“We're not divorced,” Kiba whines, as Shino twirls their marriage ring with his pointer, “We are considering.”

Kiba wails as Hinata pats his back. “Betrayal! This is betrayal! Hinata, stay with me!”)

 

(Kiba burns the _koseki_ registration papers the minute he steps outside, and Shino only laments about the carbon released into the atmosphere that this unprecedented and unnecessary action had incurred.

“But why,” he asks plaintively.

“Good luck returning me without the receipt now, bastard,” Kiba crows, blowing the ash away. “You're stuck with me until death do us part, sucker.”

“That is absolutely horrible,” he intones flatly. “How dare you.”

“Haha! You proposed first! So you just gotta suck it!” Kiba continues his little victory dance, hopping around him like a particularly annoying garden gnome and pulls him down to eye level to steal his glasses. “God really forsake you.”

“Absolutely terrible,” he repeats, leaning in for a kiss. “Cannot fathom how I will survive with you constantly in my life.”)

 

 

“I can imagine our future, you know,” Kiba mumbles into his pillow.

Shino only breathes loudly and obnoxiously as a reply.

“Just me, whoever I marry, and you living nearby,” Kiba continues, never once shutting up.

“How kind of you, to include me in your future.”

Kiba shifts, and Shino can feel himself being stared at in the dark.

“Any future of mine, no matter which direction it goes down to, will always have you, Aburame Shino. That's a given.”

Shino is silent. Shino actually doesn't have a reply to that very bold and ambiguous statement.

“Okay,” he blinks in the dark. “Thank you?”

“Don't you think it'll be neat?” Kiba continues, oblivious to everything. “Or, even better, it'll be you, me, Akamaru, and Hinata and Kurenai. That's the ideal adulthood plan.”

“Akamaru isn't going to last into your thirties, Kiba.”

“Watch him outlive you, you bug bastard.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> why is this so awkward please i'm confused and trying my best  
> please be my kibashino support friends: [twitter](https://twitter.com/tacobell_com), [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tacomakers-central)


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